Electrical workers at the Vicinity Energy steam plant in South Philadelphia say they’ve been exposed to unsafe conditions at the facility for years and the plant’s owners have been slow to make critical upgrades.
Hazards at the plant included widespread asbestos and inadequate safety measures, such as a lack of arc flash suits to protect a worker in case of an accidental electrical discharge, according to a complaint filed with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Other problems included standing water around large electrical breakers, which led the workers’ union to instruct its members to stop operating the equipment until conditions improved.
“The facilities are so old and so antiquated that there’s water everywhere,” said Lawrence Anastasi, president of Local 614 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “I said, ‘No one operates the breaker ever again, until they get the water out of there.’ So now the supervisors are doing it, and they’re not trained or qualified to do it.”
A spokesperson for Boston-based Vicinity Energy disputed some of IBEW’s claims and said some of the issues it raised have been addressed, including the shortage of arc flash suits.
“Vicinity prioritizes the safety of employees, customers and the communities we serve above all else, and follows all OSHA guidelines,” spokesperson Melissa Crowe said. “Additionally, we empower every team member with training, resources and stop-work authority to ensure risks are addressed immediately.”
However, Anastasi said this week that Vicinity has still done little to address standing water and other safety issues, or to address a pervasive rat problem and inadequate bathroom facilities for workers.
“They got really lucky”
The plant at Christian Street and Schuylkill Avenue, on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River in Grays Ferry, dates to 1915 and has been upgraded many times since then by different owners.
It’s a cogeneration plant, meaning it produces both electricity and steam, and it feeds a 41-mile network of pipes carrying steam to hundreds of buildings, including the Wanamaker Building, the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Art Museum and Comcast’s office towers.
Along with conventional natural gas, the plant can run on waste cooking oil, “renewable natural gas” from organic waste, and wind- and solar-generated power, and the company has pitched its steam as a less carbon-intensive and more climate-friendly way to heat buildings than standard gas boilers. Vicinity runs similar “district energy” systems in Trenton, Boston and other cities.
“There’s huge boilers in there, there’s switch gear, there’s big circuit breakers,” Anastasi said. “And all that is governed by OSHA.”
The plant has had safety issues on a few occasions in recent years, both for workers and the nearby residential neighborhood. For example, an apparent steam leak in 2022 created a loud, high-pitched noise that neighbors had to endure for about five days and drew a violation notice from the city.
In 2016, one of its main boilers exploded, blowing out the windows, slightly injuring one person outside, and sending a pillar of red smoke over the building. Sean Finnegan, a 13-year employee who serves as the union’s business manager at the plant, said the accident happened after the company repeatedly failed to fix a gas leak.
“They got lucky, because everybody was gone for the day. They really got lucky,” he said. “They could have killed a bunch of people. I mean, we’re in a neighborhood. It’s not like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Allegations of ignored concerns
In July, OSHA issued Vicinity a “serious” citation and an $11,823 penalty for an incident that had apparently occurred in January. Pressurized air had not been cleared from a line leading from a tanker truck to a sodium hydroxide tank, “exposing employees to chemical burn hazards,” according to the citation. The problem was corrected during an inspection.
Anastasi said a non-union worker was electrocuted and seriously injured earlier this year when he was working on equipment he mistakenly thought had been de-energized, or turned off. In an email, Crowe mentioned an OSHA citation related to unauthorized contractor actions, which she said the company is appealing.
The Vicinity plant has apparently not seen many serious injuries like those that occurred at the Boston plant in 2021, when a steam pipe rupture burned two workers. But this summer, when union officials started preparing for contract negotiations and asked the 57 IBEW members there what they wanted, they brought up safety rather than pay and benefits, Anastasi said.
For years, Vicinity Energy and previous owners have simply ignored workers’ concerns, Finnegan said.
“There would be standing water right next to an electrical bus, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, we got to do something about this.’ And supervisors would giggle and walk away,” he said. “All right, well, youse just don’t care. I want to go home to my family. I have to operate this stuff, you know? You’re just leaving the building.”
Another concern for the IBEW team is decades-old asbestos insulation that is used in many parts of the plant and in some places is exposed and present in the air. The union suspects that two of its members who have cancer — one with kidney cancer, the other with lung cancer — got sick from asbestos exposure over many years.
OSHA complaint prompts some action
A precipitating incident for the union’s complaint was a small arc flash that occurred recently when a worker was operating one of the facility’s large breakers, which function like on/off switches for pumps or other equipment. No one was hurt, but employees became concerned, Finnegan said.
The IBEW officials said they asked for some improvements, but the company reacted slowly or failed to act on the requests.
One demand is related to the many pieces of electrical equipment at the plant lacking required power rating labels. Those labels let operators know how potentially dangerous the equipment is and what type of arc flash suit or other safety measures are required, Anastasi said.
According to the union president, Vicinity managers said, “‘we got a contractor out here to look at it, to give us a price. It’s just too expensive. It’s going to cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, and we could just do a little at a time.’ I said, ‘It’s not the employee’s job to create a safe work environment, it is the employer’s job to provide a safe work environment.’ This should have been done years ago.”
In September, the union filed an OSHA complaint saying Vicinity Energy was not supplying workers with safety equipment, including arc flash suits and dielectric gloves, didn’t have the required labels, and was not protecting employees from asbestos exposure during an abatement project in an area called the Edison Plant.
OSHA did not conduct an inspection to verify the allegations, but it notified Vicinity of the complaints, according to a letter from the agency that IBEW provided to Billy Penn. That led the company to start making some fixes, although the slow pace of work led Anastasi to consider filing a second complaint.
He said the plant also has other problems beyond the safety issues. There are “rats everywhere,” he said, and there are no bathrooms in areas like the “Demon plant,” or demineralization plant, where some IBEW members work.
At the same time, the upstairs offices are being renovated as Vicinity prepares for a possible sale of the facility, he said.
A dispute over claims of progress
Vicinity Energy denied some of the union’s complaints. “No rodent issues have been observed or reported, and running water and restroom facilities are adequately maintained near the demineralization plant,” Crowe said.
Anastasi maintained this week that the site’s rat and mouse problems are well-known to the company, and he said Vicinity has hired a contractor to attempt to reduce their numbers.
Crowe said the company “made significant upgrades” to employee work rooms, break rooms and bathrooms, although it was unclear which ones she was referring to. Anastasi said those may be bathrooms for management personnel, since the bathrooms his members use remain in poor condition.
Vicinity also contended that some of the main safety complaints have been addressed.
“Standing water was mitigated immediately and the root cause corrected,” Crowe said. “The facility has and continues to supply sufficient arc flash suits and protective equipment,” and the “labeling deficiencies … are being promptly addressed.”
Anastasi disputed those statements. There is still standing water, and IBEW members are still not operating the equipment in those areas, he said. No new equipment rating labels have been added. Each of the plant’s units now has one modern arc flash suit, but there should be individual suits fitted to each employee who needs one, he said.
On the asbestos issue, Crowe said exposure monitoring showed no employees were exposed to the material as part of the abatement project, and Vicinity has not heard anything further from OSHA. The IBEW officials noted that the agency has gone quiet recently due to the federal government shutdown.
Crowe did not address the broader issue of asbestos throughout the plant. Finnegan said he recently spent an hour opening a valve in an area of the plant that was very hot — about 120 degrees, he estimated — and there was clearly asbestos in the air.
“We have an area that’s called ‘asbestos heaven.’ That’s what we call it,” he said. “We don’t go up there very often, but there’s times that we have to go up there.”
The post Vicinity Energy steam plant safety conditions spur OSHA complaint appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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